


me with you

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27360169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: It's as if he wants to hear what Haizaki has to say.
Relationships: Haizaki Shougo & Nijimura Shuuzou
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	me with you

**Author's Note:**

> hbd zaki!

It was not so much bringing out the worst in him than changing the angle on the surface, Haizaki used to think. He’d never had much of a disguise about who he was, never had a mind for subterfuge, just straightforward anger, resentment, and malice. There was nothing to bring out because it was already there and ready, just perhaps not seen because the people doing the looking weren’t paying him enough mind, or saw what they wanted to see, something better, something different.

Some of them had tried to change him, but they’d really wanted to make it look like they were trying more than they’d actually wanted to try. They hadn’t wanted to change him to make him happier or to do anything for him, just make him suit their ends--and Akashi had discarded him, after something better had come along. It wasn’t worth keeping him; he was just another replaceable, inferior component. 

He’d wanted to believe Nijimura, just a little, when he’d called him out and said he’d known where Haizaki was coming from, except then Nijimura had smiled at Akashi, had listened to him, had ultimately given up the captaincy to Akashi--ultimately, he’d endorsed that. He’d agreed with Akashi; he’d been on Akashi’s side.

It’s easier to think that than that Nijimura could like both Akashi and him, that Nijimura wasn’t picking a side. It’s easier to write him off, even if the feelings of disappointment and betrayal aren’t easy, but they’re easier than hope. Why should he bother changing, when other people will just move on? What’s wrong with the way he is, anyway? Why can’t he be the right one and all of them wrong? Loving basketball, playing with heart, all of that doesn’t mean a goddamn thing, and it’s all a facade anyway, for cliquey people slamming doors in his face like they always have. This one is no different. Even if Nijimura really had known where Haizaki was coming from, even if just he thought he had, he really doesn’t. If he had, he would have pulled Haizaki in there with him.

It’s easier to think that, even years later. There’s nothing they have to say to each other. There’s no good reason for Haizaki to think about his years as a teenage loser, and how Nijimura had made him feel a little bit more like he’d belonged, a little bit like he had something to aspire to--all of that was a lie, and all of that is years in the past. Nijimura probably doesn’t even remember him, Haizaki decides. He must have known loads of other annoying kids, and it’s clear his priorities lay with the ones with shiny, sparkly skills and pretty hair. So what if they work at the same restaurant? They rarely so much as exchange greetings; Nijimura’s a waiter and Haizaki’s an assistant chef; Nijimura’s in school and Haizaki’s trying to make a career out of this. Eventually he’ll get a better job, or quit because school’s too much, and that will be that.

Haizaki doesn’t smoke, but he takes smoke breaks anyway, leaning against the back wall of the restaurant and staring into the sky. Sometimes he plays on his phone, but most of the time he just needs to not be moving, not be standing over a hot stove, resting his back against something firm. The sun emerges from behind a cloud; Haizaki squints. The back door opens behind him; it’s Nijimura. Haizaki ignores him.

He doesn’t remember. Haizaki looks too different now, anyway, though Nijimura looks the same. There’s no way.

“It’s been a while.”

Haizaki doesn’t have it in him to lie, still. He shrugs.

Nijimura looks at him, not in a calculating way, trying to decide what to do with him, but as if he’s waiting, as if he wants to hear what Haizaki has to say.

“I guess.”

(He can’t get too mad at Nijimura; he never has--there was no best in him to bring out back then, but Nijimura always had a way at peeling back his sharp edges with deft fingers. Haizaki’s still got no fucking clue how to defend against that.)

Haizaki doesn’t go back in until one of the other cooks comes calling for him, but he decides, standing over the stove again, that that must have been a one-off thing. Nijimura’s satisfied. He’d said nothing else. There is nothing to say, and nothing to do. There is no feeling of cautious hope, blooming in Haizaki’s chest against his will--he’s got nothing to be nostalgic for, a shitty time in his life, a laundry list of bad things he’d done, how easily he’d been written off as irredeemable, and how maybe they’d all been right.

Except he’d felt a little bit like Nijimura had cared, and it’s hard not to feel that again, now.

As much as Haizaki dawdles when he sees Nijimura heading out when his shift ends, he can’t escape leaving at the same time that day. They head the same way, and Nijimura doesn’t turn off toward a bus stop or a walk home.

“Did you really care?” Haizaki asks. “Back then.”

It’s cruel, maybe, but it’s blunt, a punch Nijimura can see from ten kilometers away. He doesn’t look too thrown by it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I did.”

It’s not a knee-jerk reaction, not defensive, just there. It hurts more than that would have, or a denial would have; it rings too true. If he’d really cared, then--Haizaki can’t ask why he’d chosen Akashi; it feels a little too petty and mean all these years later, even though up until recently he might have said it anyway. Or maybe he would have said it to anyone else, but he can’t say it to Nijimura.

“Thanks,” Haizaki says. “I guess.”

“Yeah,” says Nijimura. 

They go the same way on the train, and Haizaki’s stop is first. Maybe, he thinks, it wouldn’t be so bad if they went home together more often. His mind moves to stop itself from going down that road, but Haizaki lets it go there, maybe just this once.


End file.
